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Daily Journal

Hilltop High School

Day 4

We were off for a morning visit to the fishing village of Isla Pardito.

Landing on the shore we could see the fishermen busily cutting up the days catch.

The catch consisted of snapper, Creole fish, shark and stingrays.

Stasia explains the method of preserving the fish.

First the fish meat is soaked in the brine (taken from the salt pans visited yesterday).

Then it is dusted in the sea salt, collected from the salt pans, and laid out to dry.

Drying shark fins for the Japanese market.

The women of the fishing village collect shells from
the beach and make jewelry to sell to those that visit the island.

It is absolutely beautiful to see the finished pieces.

The students take a moment to shop.

After shopping we headed to another part of the island
where a collection of whale bones and skulls can be found.

We thought we were done and headed back to the boat...

...only to make one more quick stop and pick up a snapper
from one of the fishermen who was hand lining off the point.

It was a huge snapper and the
Captain (Martin) was scaling and cleaning it for supper.

Once Captain was finished, Paloma one of the
cooks, took it into the kitchen to prepare it for dinner.

As we continued our days adventures we
encountered a pod of Bottlenosed dolphins.

They were all around us and very playful.

Some jumped ...

... and others REALLY jumped! It was amazing!

We ended up on the doorstep of the community of Ensenada de Cortez.

We started distributing the gifts. Earlier in the season a group had
brought a glove and ball to donate and it was given to the younger
brother of the young man in the picture. He was very disappointed
that his younger brother received the gift but said nothing. I had
seen the look on his face and realized we should have given the
ball and glove to the older brother. So I phoned Randy (the teacher
of this group) and asked him if he could ask the students if anyone
had a bat, ball and glove kicking around that they would like to donate.
This is how this young man received the gifts in the picture.

The group also brought down volleyballs and soccer balls.
So we were invited to join in on a game of friendly volleyball.

Some students played catch with the ball and gloves,
some played soccer with the youngsters in the community and
others simply hung out with the other members of the community.

Just before we departed we handed out some of the gift bags.
Please refer to the Baja Gifts Program page of this journal.

The community members escorted us to our pangas and
waved as we left. We all had a great afternoon visiting our new friends.

And for dinner... baked Snapper stuffed with
vegetables and cheese, spanish rice and tortillas.

We awoke at 8:00, got ourselves dressed and sat down for a delicious breakf
ast. We then prepared our sunscreen, water bottles and hats for our journey to the isolated fishing village. At the village we, as a group, sang happy birthday to Tio Manuel, the elder of the fishing village in Spanish.

We then observed the gutting of sharks, stingrays and snapper. Next we were shown how someone would cure fish without the opportunity of electrically powered storage compartments. We then started a steep trek up to the peak of this island fishing village, on our way we witnessed various homes and the abandoned school on the island. After learning about the history of the island being managed by generations of the same family, we climbed down from the peak and enjoyed approximately a half hour of shopping.

After some of us were finished shopping, we made our way down to the boats where a local fisherman was unloading his days catch. We then walked over to a building that was surrounded by whale skeletons which was the first skeletons observed by the group. After we spoke of how the skeletons got there and what type of whales they were we made our way back to the boat.

We stopped part way back to talk to more local fishermen using a primitive method of hand-reeling fish onto shore. These men Lela knew quite well and they gave us a huge, honkin' snapper, which to our delight supplied the entire boat for dinner.

After we ate lunch, we witnessed a large pod of bottlenose dolphins swimming and jumping next to us. Luckily these dolphins were in a playful mood so we got to watch them backflip and propel themselves out of the water by more than 10 feet. It was too windy to snorkel, so we asked the Captain to drive with the dolphins for a little over a half hour. After all the acrobatics witnessed by the beautiful dolphins we anchored in a calmer bay and some of the group went beachcombing.

We had too much sun previously and wanted to give our bodies a break, so we stayed in the boat and passed the time by playing cribbage and cards. When the rest of the group came back from beachcombing, we pulled in the anchor and were off to our first village where we got to give out gift packages and enjoy a friendly game of volleyball. In our game of volleyball we had a mixture of players from, coaches, players and of course locals from the village. After about an hour and a half of playing (and about a pound of sand covering at least myself) we got back into our Pangas and made our journey back to the Narval.

When we arrived on the boat Mily and Paloma had cooked and prepared a perfect dinner made from the snapper the fisherman gave us. After a brief stint of whale watching most of us headed indoors and talked about all the cool things we had done so far.

At eleven we all went to bed anticipating tomorrow’s adventure to a goat herding village and much more!

Day 1 and Day 2 - part 1 | Day 2 - part 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6

Day 7 | Day 8 | Baja Gifts Program | Back To Main Page

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